The sight made Mal so angry that he ran at the pike and punched his fist right into Leo’s nose, breaking off what crumbling shards of bone were left there to begin with. “I don’t care if the queen is scared of you—I’m not, and I’m going to fucking end you!” he shouted at the head as splinters of bone cut his much-abused hand.
“You would if you could, I’m sure,” the wraith murmured almost sympathetically. “I was an enemy of the elves in life, so they killed me and bound me here. Then I became a servant of the Shadow Queen, a lieutenant in her fight. I was charged with keeping souls that threatened her here in my domain, but once I had gathered enough, once I learned how to feed on their energy, I grew stronger,” the wraith continued, as if Mal bashing its borrowed face in was of no consequence. “I shouldn’t have to bow to anyone, not even the Deathless Lady, with a power like mine. The one who raised you has beensounhappy you’re here, by the way, but he’s a little too tied up to greet you at the moment.”
Mal only glared. He wasn’t going to give this thing the satisfaction of goading him into further destroying his hand. He stepped back again, eyes still on the wraith, though he kept watching the luminous gathering of spirits near his friends out of the corner of his eye too.
No wonder Rhun’s companions had never breathed a word of what they had experienced out here. The wraith would have wanted this same fate for them, to keep their souls trapped here, and it had already demonstrated how far it could travel, even if its powers were greatly muted in Linden.
“I’ve almost had the tall one a few times now too. He looks a bit like the other Warden among my ranks,” the wraith went on, clearly meaning Rhun. “He has the most elf blood of any of you; he’s going to taste the best when I grind his bones to dust and wrap him in my chains.”
The chains.
It was the mention of them that finally got Mal moving his numbed feet again, slowly and subtly inching him toward Alys and Griff and the broken blade. He needed to use it. He had an idea.
“But the girl … the girl is going to make the sweetest screams when I bind her soul to my service.” The wraith leered, once again bidding for his attention.
Mal’s jaw tightened, and he swallowed a retort that would do nothing but anger the spirit more. Still, he couldn’t help shaking his head the slightest bit. As if anything, man or demon or wizard or wraith, could ever take from Alys without her consent, even if she didn’t fully understand yet that she could be even stronger if she didn’t fight all her battles alone.
“You all have done a better job of avoiding all the Mire’s little misfortunes than I would have expected,” the wraith went on as Mal stepped closer yet to his friends. The soft glow of the spirits gleamed silver white along the shard of blade he was stealthily creeping toward.
“The wyvern attacking in daylight—that was you,” Mal said, hoping to keep the wraith distracted. “And you were waiting by the silver chest, hoping to trap our souls after the Shadow Queen’s revenants ripped us apart. All this time, you’ve been using Rhun’s things to bring us closer to where your bones are, where you’re strongest, so you could claim our spirits before your ex-lady had the chance.”
The orc’s eyes glinted as if pleased at all this understanding.
“I’ll enjoy passing the long years with you,” the wraith laughed. “With a mind and a mouth like that, I might even put you on the front lines. The hero of my collection. My champion. So clever.Tooclever, I’d say; I’ve been watching you since the moment you were handed my map.”
The map. Of course. Kage had to have known the baggage it came with, which meant there was no way his boss had expectedhim to return. Kage hadn’t wanted to risk sending anyone of actual importance to try to retrieve what his queen felt was still rightfully hers.
Alys’s shaking, chilled hand grasped Mal’s ankle, but he didn’t look at her. Not yet. His scowl deepened as he locked gazes with the wraith again, the cloth hilt of the broken blade now snug in his cold fingers. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the slight rise and fall of Griff’s chest, and that was all he needed to keep going and do something truly risky.
“Wellyou’renot very clever, you stupid bag of bones, because I have no interest in being anyone’s hero or doing a damn thing with my life that anyone wants me to,” Mal snarled, bolting toward the spot where Rhun’s spirit watched helplessly as the wraith prepared to kill his daughter and his best friends’ sons.
Mal’s eyes met his for the briefest moment before he used the broken blade to cut the chains on Rhun’s ankles and wrists.
Somewhere behind him, the wraith howled, and the ravens answered with their own angry chorus.
Mal turned and shouted over it all, “Alys—I’m sorry about Leo. I know how much you liked him.”
He was counting on the long years of understanding between them.
And with that, he tossed the broken blade back in her direction, into her waiting hands.
“Seize them!” the wraith shrieked at someone—all the chained ghosts, Mal realized.
The long-dead entity must have power to command and compel those it held bound, just like the queen he once served. It must have forced Rhun’s spirit to wander near the wyvern’s nest that day, almost leading Griff to his death.
Mal threw himself over top of Griff’s prone form, trying his best to shield him as he felt sharp, icy fingers start to tug at his clothes and hair.
The ravens beat their wings and swarmed overhead, sounding as unhappy with this turn of events as he was, making it hard for Mal to see where Alys was now. If she was able to do what he had suggested.
He caught the flash of the blade raised above her head, and two large chunks of Leo went rolling off the pike before the wraith had a chance to slither out of there. It moaned, a death knell that made Mal’s stomach writhe, and then they were left alone in the aftershocks of a suddenly quiet night.
The icy fingers had stopped tugging at him and Griff. Even the ravens settled, no longer making a racket. Mal turned to hazard a look behind him, and there were no more gaunt, chained ghosts forced to follow orders. No spirits around them at all anymore that he could see, and definitely no shadow.
There was no more sad song in some other language echoing in the curve of his ear. No more biting, unnatural cold. The wraith was gone from this place for good, struck by the spirit blade in the hand best suited to wielding it, banished back to the shadow realm, where it would have to answer to its maker.
Mal finally rolled off of Griff to get a better look at the other man’s face and found that he was awake again despite nearly having the life squeezed out of him. As he did so, a heavy hand gripped his shoulder. Not Griff’s. It was too cold to be Griff’s, broader and callused from gripping a sword for so many years.
“Rhun?” Mal asked quietly over his shoulder on a soft exhale.
